


"Only Connect": Scully and Season Four

by Naraht



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, Meta, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-13
Updated: 2007-01-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 13:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6857047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meta about Scully's character development during season four.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This meta was originally posted in 2007 on my LJ.
> 
> The original posts, plus lots of discussion, can be found here:  
> http://emily-shore.livejournal.com/101467.html  
> http://emily-shore.livejournal.com/101915.html

So I've been watching season four of the X-Files just a little bit out of order. Having read all the reviews and spoilers ahead of time, I was unable to keep myself from seeking out all the episodes that I'd been waiting to see. So far I've seen "Herrenvolk," "Teliko," "Unruhe," "Tunguska," "Terma" (not quite all of it), "Paper Hearts," "Leonard Betts," "Never Again," "Memento Mori," "Kaddish," and "Small Potatoes."

After having seen all of the episodes in season three several times over, you would think that I'd be jumping up and down with joy at having new material. And I am, I think. But somehow the season has a very different emotional tone than the previous one. Season three had its dark and troubling moments, with the death or near-death of several Scully/Mulder family members and pets, not to mention death row killers, maggots, cockroaches, child abductions, and both Mulder and Scully teetering on the brink of insanity (and "Grotesque" really did make me feel he was going there). Despite all this, though, the overall tone of the season was upbeat. There was a string of great (or at least very entertaining) comedy/parody episodes: "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," "War of the Coprophages," "Syzygy," "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," and "Quagmire," the last of which had some beautiful character development in among the ridiculousness of small dogs being eaten by giant alligators. Mulder and Scully may have bickered a lot, but they bickered as only they can do, and Scully got to roll her eyes in the background of more scenes than I can count.

Maybe it's just because "Never Again" was the first episode I saw, but the emotional tone of season four seems completely different to me. It's melancholy, subdued, reflective, pained, and most of all it shows a deep emotional disconnect between the two characters. For me, the defining scene of the season is the last one from "Never Again":

_(SCULLY picks rose petal off his desk. MULDER watches her. Then rises uncomfortably and goes back to file cabinet.)_

_MULDER: The uh, field office in Dallas is uh, receiving reports of the image of a missing child appearing on a blank billboard outside of Arlington... (Sits again, opening new file.) ....so.... All this, because I’ve ... because I didn’t get you a desk?_

_SCULLY: (Looking up at him) Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life._

_MULDER: Yes but it’s m -_

_(SCULLY looks at him questioningly. He starts to speak again, then sighs and fiddles with things on his desk. Uncomfortable silence in the room.)_

It's not that they don't care about each other. It's not that they don't try to reach one another. Scully tries to tell Mulder that she feels she's lost sight of herself. Mulder, on his forced vacation at Graceland, calls Scully during a tour of the King's mansion just so he can share the experience with her. But, simply, they're just not able to connect. They don't know how to do it. Scully, after years of repressing her emotions, simply can't show them when she needs to, and Mulder isn't able to pursue a connection with her (whether romantic or simply emotional) except through using the language of the X-Files. And he doesn't really get through to her.

"Small Potatoes" seemed at first glance to offer some comedic and shippy gold, and indeed it does, as long as you don't look too deeply beneath the surface. Once you do, though, you discover that it, too, is all about missed chances and emotional disconnection. Eddie van Blundht may only be a janitor, but he perceives the essential emptiness in Mulder's life. He may sound like he's joking, but he isn't: "I was born a loser, but you're one by choice." While Scully reassures Mulder that he isn't a loser, he responds not with gratitude but with a jab at Scully, who did grasp at the chance that the false Mulder offered: "Yeah, but I'm no Eddie Van Blundht either. Am I?" And so another episode ends with disconnection, with Mulder and Scully left dangling, too afraid to tease and too afraid to say more.

Having failed to get any sort of satisfaction from "Small Potatoes," I turned to "Paper Hearts," which the redoubtable Autumn Tysko says demonstrates the closeness between Mulder and Scully, and the depth of her empathy for him. Well, I didn't see it. Or rather, I did see it, but not in a way that was satisfying to me. Scully is clearly affected by Mulder's pain in this episode, but she shows it by retreating into the hard-edged FBI agent persona that she has put on so often during this season. The short embrace at the end of the episode is just too little, too late. Throughout this episode I was waiting for Scully to reach out to Mulder, to comfort him in the ways that he's so often comforted her, and she just didn't do it. I could only conclude that she wasn't capable of doing it.

As a character, Scully follows a much more pronounced arc than does Mulder. At the beginning of the series, she is young and inexperienced in the field - while far from credulous or naive, she is new to the sights and ideas that Mulder exposes her to through the X-Files. By season three she's been through a lot, and changed a great deal: she's a mature agent, cynical, a bit world-weary, no longer the fresh-faced and unpolished young woman who was assigned to debunk her partner's work. In season four, though, she's changed again. The polish and poise that she's gained have begun to look more like a shell, armour that she needs to protect her from her vulnerabilities, from all the things that she doesn't want to acknowledge or feel. Scully is a survivor, but in surviving, she's lost a lot. For one thing, Mulder ends up on the wrong side of Scully's armour - the outside.

This process, I suppose, begins earlier. An important scene comes at the beginning of "Piper Maru" in the third season. Skinner tells Scully that the Bureau has given up on solving her sister's murder... news that affects Scully deeply. Yet when she goes down to the basement office, she naturally brushes off Mulder's concern: "No. It's nothing. What did you want to talk to me about?" After that, Mulder is off and running on his latest conspiracy theory, and although she may regret not opening up to him, Scully has missed her chance. And she keeps missing her chances all through the fourth season.

The exception is "Memento Mori," when we finally see Scully letting her vulnerable side show. When she finally has no choice. Yes, there is a deep connection between the two of them. Yes, she understands how much she needs him, and by reading a diary that she didn't intend him to see, Mulder understands it too. The truth, Scully finally understands, is within her as well as "out there," and the truth will save them both. Yes, it's satisfying and yes, it's a wonderful episode.

Yet I still think that these Scully angst episodes serve a deeper purpose than allowing Gillian Anderson to show how beautifully she cries. Quite simply, Scully has gotten so good at burying and repressing her emotions that the writers can only bring them to the surface by breaking her down completely. It makes for wonderful drama, but in character terms it can only be destructive (and remember that I'm writing as someone who hasn't seen any more of the series). With every trauma, every loss, every grief, every trial that Scully survives, the wounds only get deeper, the scars only get worse, and Scully never lets her guard down long enough to allow herself to heal. Outwardly she gets more competent, more controlled, harder, tougher, stronger... and inside, she builds the walls ever higher.

With the words of EM Forster, I'd like to offer season four Scully a simple piece of advice: "Only connect."


	2. Chapter 2

It seems that I may have underestimated the two of them - a little. Or perhaps I should have waited until the end of season four before I wrote my essay, except that I rather like the incremental approach. Now it's time for part two, because taken together, "Elegy," "Demons" and "Gethsemane" offer a somewhat different view of the Mulder/Scully relationship.

During the course of her illness, Scully has been as honest with Mulder as it's possible for her to be. In fact, Mulder finds out about the cancer before even her mother does. This is significant because, in both "The Blessing Way" and in "Wetwired," we see that Scully turns to her mother for support in times of trouble. Yet in this case it is Mulder who is the one that Scully relies on. As Scully says in "Elegy," when talking with a counsellor at the FBI: "I guess I never realized how much I rely on him before this ... his passion ... he's been a great source of strength that I've drawn on." In her conversation with the counsellor, Scully is forced to consider the question of why she decided to keep working - a question that she never even considered - and to realise how much that decision is tied to her feelings for Mulder, and her fear of failing him.

Scully doesn't exactly make it easy for Mulder to reach out to her. Her usual refrain of "I'm fine" only increases in frequency as she becomes less and less fine. Yet Mulder comes through in the end. At first he only reaches out to her in a brief aside during his relentless pursuit of a case:

_MULDER: I needed your help on something. I needed your medical expertise._

_SCULLY: On what?_

_MULDER: Harold Spuller. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't even ask you. What did your doctor say?_

_SCULLY: I'm fine._

_MULDER: Good._

_SCULLY: What's up, Mulder?_

_MULDER: Angie Pintero, the bowling alley guy? He's dead._

Only a devoted fan of the X-Files - and specifically of Fox Mulder - could view this exchange as evidence of concern, a deep emotional bond, or indeed of anything other than an inquiry born out of anything other than perfunctory politeness. After receiving an equally perfunctory answer, Mulder doesn't appear to care to pursue the issue any further, or to ask himself whether Scully is really being honest with him.

But, of course, we know that Mulder does care. The breakthrough comes at the very end of "Elegy," prompted by Scully's admission that she, too, has seen visions of the recently dead:

_MULDER: (in a slightly annoyed tone) Why didn't you tell me?_

_SCULLY: Because I didn't want to believe it. Because I don't want to believe it._

_MULDER: Is that why you came down here, to prove that it wasn't true?_

_SCULLY: No, I came down here because you asked me to._

_MULDER: Why can't you be honest with me?_

_SCULLY: (defensively) What do you want me to say? That you're right, that, that I believe it even if I don't. I mean, is that what you want?_

_MULDER: Is that what you think I want to hear?_

_SCULLY: (softly) No._

_MULDER: You can believe what you want to believe, Scully, but you can't hide the truth from me because if you do, then you're working against me ... and yourself. (his voice softens) I know what you're afraid of. I'm afraid of the same thing._

_SCULLY: The doctor said I was fine._

_MULDER: I hope that's the truth._

It's difficult, I believe, to exaggerate the importance of this exchange in the context of the fourth season character arc. Scully has been hiding her experience from Mulder because she is afraid that her visions of the recently dead mean that she, too, is close to death. (After all, Mulder tells her it is so.) Afraid to admit this to him, her emotional walls are so high that she is actively keeping the truth from her partner. It is this realisation that finally catalyses Mulder into action. He reaches out to her, telling her that she can't hide the truth from him, telling her that her recognises her fear and her vulnerability, and admitting his own vulnerability. While clearly shaken by this, Scully can't exactly bring herself to respond with the same openness. She falls back on another authority figure: the _doctor_ , she insists, said she was fine. She isn't willing to go so far as to assert the fact herself. But Mulder pursues the issue just a little further: "I hope that's the truth."

After this exchange, Scully retreats, unable to deal with the emotional charge of the discussion, and still unable to honestly discuss with Mulder her fear of dying. Yet though the events of the next episode, "Demons," she is made able to demonstrate the strength of her connection to Mulder through her actions rather than through her words. This is a typically male approach to the expression of emotion, but then, Scully has never been an average young woman.

When Mulder is found with two rounds discharged from his gun, with the blood of two dead people on his shirt, with the keys to their house and their car - and no knowledge of how he got into such a state - his rational, empiricist partner blindly asserts her faith in his innocence. Scully's care for Mulder is everywhere in this episode, from the opening scene when she drives up to Rhode Island on the spur of the moment to come to Mulder's aid, finding him shocky and shivering in his hotel room shower and wrapping him gently in a towel, to the final scene where she goes into the Quonochontaug house alone to confront her armed and irrational partner. "Are you going to shoot me, Mulder?" she asks. "Is that how much this means to you?" Scully may not be able to admit her feelings to Mulder, but "Demons" makes the fact very clear: this is how much he means to her.

In "Gethsemane," the themes of connection and disconnection come to the fore again. We learn that Scully's cancer has metastatized, but that she hasn't yet been able to bring herself to tell Mulder. We also learn that she didn't want her brother Bill to know about the cancer at all. "Because it's very personal," she says. "Because I don't want sympathy."

Bill is able to offer his sister more than sympathy when he confronts her about her silence, telling her that she has a responsibility to the people in her life. She responds by defending her lack of openness: "Hey, look, just because I haven't bared my soul to you, or to Father McCue, or to God, it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to what's important to me!"

So what is important to Dana Scully? To whom does she feel that sense of responsibility? We know, and Bill knows: "To what?! To who? This guy, Mulder?" And Bill has one final thought on the matter: "Well where is he, Dana? Where is he through all this?" Mulder, rather unsurprisingly, is in the Yukon hunting aliens. Ah well. You win some, you lose some.

So where does this leave us, at the end of season four? (Leaving aside certain plot points for which I await resolution before commenting.) Scully cares about Mulder, and bares her soul to him more than she does to her mother, her brother, her priest, or God, but when it comes down to it she is rarely able to be honest with him about her feelings, her fears and the things that really matter to her. Mulder cares about Scully, he trusts her, he relies on her and he offers her strength in her illness, but when it comes down to it he is rarely able to really see her, to acknowledge her as an independent person with her own beliefs and desires, and to be present when she needs him. Scully ditches Mulder emotionally just as much as Mulder ditches Scully in real life. Yet they do sincerely care about one another, and every so often they are able to show it. Perhaps they deserve each other. 

Is this an optimistic conclusion or not? On balance I think not. Still, there are other seasons ahead.

 _All transcripts and quotes from the X-Files Transcript Archive:_ http://www.insidethex.co.uk


End file.
